


Cracked and Scratched, Not Broken

by Cosmic_Biscuit



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Drama, Endgame, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Major Illness, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Instability, Other, Possession, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 01:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Biscuit/pseuds/Cosmic_Biscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things break, pieces fall. You can always try to put them back together, but you can't always find all the pieces again, and you just have to do the best you can with what you've got.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Step Back From the Flames, Hand in Hand

**Author's Note:**

> The last time they pulled each other back from the fire before everything burned down, and the flames catch up to Mikan in the end.

She didn't know how long she'd been hiding in the cabinet. The yelling and dashing about had long died away, and the thin strip of light that came between the cabinet doors had gone dark, but she still hadn't dared move. Nervously, she began fiddling in her hair, wincing in pain whenever she pulled a place where the mess had dried in it. Had enough time passed? Had her plan worked? Was-  
  
"Mikan-chan."  
  
She stiffened, then breathed out a sigh of relief. Only two people called her that, Enoshima-sama was currently angry with her, and the voice was too low, so it had to be Komaeda-kun. Even so, she was very cautious as she poked her head out of her hiding spot, relaxing only when she spotted the boy peering into a dark space under a table in search of her. "O-over here."  
  
He raised his head and smiled, but the swelling and bloody scratches on his face and neck were obvious even in the dim moonlight. Evidently Enoshima-sama was angry with him as well this time. Mikan bit her lip as she crawled out of the cabinet. Before she could say anything, he reached out and patted her head, then wrinkled his nose as he drew his hand back with a sticky noise. "Mikan-chan, your _hair_ -"  
  
Her face heated in shame. "I- it... it was... surgical glue... and... a-and cast plaster..." she mumbled, staring at the floor as she fumbled with the hem of her skirt.  
  
She didn't see if his expression changed, but he pulled away and went back to the table. "Your handiwork, then?"  
  
She hesitantly followed him and looked over to find the two nursing assistants who'd been tormenting her earlier sprawled on the floor, one clutching her stomach, and the other clutching her phone in a failed attempt to call for help. The coffee they'd made her go get had done its job, then. "Y-yes."  
  
When she made herself raise her head, he was smiling again, and he gave her an encouraging squeeze around the shoulders. "Well, then," he said brightly. "How about I take care of this little mess, and then we go get cleaned up, hm?"  
  
"Ah- S-shouldn't I deal with it?" she asked, surprised. "I-I mean, I was- was the one who-"  
  
"You've already done the hard part. Getting rid of them will be a snap."  
  
She should have helped him, what with his terrible sickness and all, or at least fussed at him about handling dead bodies with open wounds on his face, but even with the months they'd known each other, he still moved a lot faster than she expected. In half a second, he'd left her alone to go get something to shift the dead bodies. She glanced over the table at them, then swallowed and decided to at least make herself useful, going to the supply room to put together a kit to treat his injuries.  
  
When she came back, the bodies were already gone, and Komaeda-kun was waiting on her. "Ready to go?"  
  
She nodded, holding up the kit she'd made, then locked the laboratory behind them as they left.  
  
They ended up going to his hiding place, since it was closer. Shuffling some schematics and supply lists aside, she indicated for him to sit, and he obeyed.  
  
She couldn't really explain it, but even before Enoshima-sama had begun encouraging them to be friends, treating Komaeda-kun had always been... _comforting_. He never gave her any trouble at all. Never whined, nor threatened, nor squirmed, nor lashed out... Just sat very quietly and sometimes leaned into her hands a little and _oh_ , it was _really_ nice.  
  
But her mind was wandering. She snapped back to herself with a little shake of her head, and was glad his eyes weren't open to see her blush. Quickly, she finished up bandaging his wounds, then stepped back. "A-all done."  
  
"Masterful hands as always, Mikan-chan," Komaeda-kun said with a bright smile before getting up and indicating the spot he'd been sitting. "Now it's your turn."  
  
Fear washed through her before she could stop it at the thought of anyone getting near her hair with scissors. The last time someone had offered to do her hair-  
  
She could still remember the smell of her hair burning-  
  
_No_. This was Komaeda-kun. He would never do anything like that to her.  
  
"Mikan-chan?"  
  
He'd stopped smiling at her, and was now looking at her with concern and some apprehension that she recognized as a prelude to an apology and a revocation of the offer. She managed to quickly pull herself back together and stood straight. "I'm ready."  
  
He fetched a brush and some scissors from somewhere in the tiny apartment, and she sat down on the couch, facing away from him. "U-um."  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"Could- C-could you maybe leave as much as possible?"  
  
"I'll try," he promised, and set to work.  
  
Fingers and brush bristles carefully combed through her hair, picking and peeling to try and save areas. Even though it hurt whenever he pulled at a dried-over sticky snare, she found herself relaxing into the treatment and the sound of the scissors clipping away at what he couldn't work free. She wondered if he got the same kind of comfort out of this as she did from patching his face.  
  
Finally, though, he sighed. "Are... you sure you don't want it short?"  
  
That gave her a little chill of dread down her back. "How-... how b-bad is it?"  
  
He handed her a mirror, and when she looked at her reflection, she had to gulp back the sudden desire to burst into tears. All the efforts she'd put into growing her hair back after the times she'd cut it for others' amusement had been ruined by the mess she'd been stuck with; her hair stuck out and hung in even more raggedy patches than before despite Komaeda's attempts to even up the areas that had needed the worst cutting.  
  
She bit her lip near to bleeding as she struggled to fight down tears, then hands settled on her shoulders.

"I can fix it, but it'll be more like a pixie cut. Do you want me to?"  
  
She shook her head. She didn't even know why it was so damn important to keep her long hair, but it just... _was_ , and the thought of losing it was like a slap in the face.  
  
The hands on her shoulders squeezed. "Let me try something else, then. I'll be right back, okay?"  
  
There were little nail-bruises in her palms by the time he came back, and she stayed rigidly still as he worked on her hair again. There were more snipping sounds. Small somethings slid though her hair and closed with little clicking noises, and then he gathered her hair up and she felt him winding it into a braid down her back. "There we go. Better?"  
  
She didn't realize she'd squeezed her eyes shut until she had to open them to look in the mirror.  
  
Mikan made a tiny gasp when she saw the results of his efforts. The little somethings had been several hair clips in the shapes of winding vines, carefully arranged like a headband to hold back some of the messiest cuts.  
  
"I found these in one of the abandoned buildings Enoshima-san asked me to raze last week and I thought they were pretty. They're not exactly my style, though, so you're welcome to keep them if you like them."  
  
Keep them. He was actually asking her if she wanted to _keep them_ , those little vine clips that actually managed to make her ugly, _horrible_ hair look... _nice_. She _itched_ to say yes, but she knew better. Saionji especially would break them if she caught her wearing them.  
  
She hesitated, then had started to reach up to take them out when both their phones began beeping urgently. She dug hers out of the pocket of her apron and flipped it open to find that it was a text message to meet Ikusaba-san three districts over. Looking over her shoulder, she found Komaeda frowning slightly at the same message, then he relaxed and smiled. "Looks like Enoshima-san isn't angry enough to separate us this time. Lucky, isn't it?"  
  
Mikan smiled back, unconsciously touching the hair clips. "Yep!"  
  
He dug out a duffel bag of protective gear and handed it to her to carry, then put together a pack of his incendiary devices and a pack of fuel supplies.  
  
As they left his apartment, she squeezed his hand. She wasn't sure why. Maybe for luck. Maybe as thanks for the hair clips. But either way, when he squeezed back, she felt light and reassured about the mission ahead.  
  
They'd be fine as long as they had each other to clean up afterwards, she was sure of it.

 

===

 

  
It was wrong. _It was wrong_. Why wasn't he-

  
Her nails bit little purple marks into her palms as she clenched shaking hands tighter and pressed them harder against her thighs in an old, familiar gesture every time he opened his damn mouth.

  
It wasn't _fair_. He'd always, _always_ forgiven her before... They were supposed to be- They were supposed to be-

  
He didn't remember. That was the _excuse_. But it wasn't _good enough_. After all, he'd been the one to get angry at Enoshima-sama and leave them all first, hadn't he? And for what? _For what?_

  
_'You know what,'_ a little voice that sounded like her own said in her head, but she stomped it flat and kicked it aside as unimportant. No. No, no, no, that _betrayal_ was what swam in her head with every word he spoke, and she tried in her rage to make him understand. But the words weren't coming out right. He wasn't getting it. _He wasn't getting it._

  
She bit her tongue against the bitter sour swirl rising up in her stomach and her throat as the little voice tried to make itself heard again over her own desire to make Enoshima-sama happy and the angry words the others were saying to her. Helplessly, she started giggling, trying to shut it all out.

  
"- _Super High School Level Despair_ -"

  
The taste of bile in her mouth grew sharper as she was suddenly stabbed with a desire to both hurt him and cling to him.

  
Hurting won.

  
He didn't remember? He didn't care?

  
Then- then, _fine_.

  
He _didn't count_ anymore. Only Enoshima-sama counted, as she _should have_ all along.

  
"Only _that person_ …it was _only_ that person…that’s right, _only_ that person…didn’t hate me," she cooed, savoring the play of confusion across his face as he tried to follow her explanation. And when he gave her the opening, she struck as precisely as she would have had she held a syringe in her hand.

  
"-Is it because you've never been forgiven by anyone at all?" she asked with as much sweet poison dripping from her voice as possible. "You poor _thing_. I feel _so_ sorry for you."

  
His stricken expression, the way he silently took a step back as if she'd stabbed him, they should have been satisfying.

  
_Should_ have been.

  
Then why, as she lay on the bed waiting for whatever Monokuma's chosen punishment was, did it feel like her chest was on fire? Why couldn't she breathe?

  
Maybe-

  
_Maybe-_

  
One of her hands clenched at her side again involuntarily, as if holding on to another's. But it was too late, and Monokuma was coming.


	2. Gluing Mirror Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Repairs to be made, ties to be mended, but everything has to start little by little.

_“What I would like and what I deserve are... entirely different things, I think.”_  
  
_He never once raises his head all the way. Once in awhile, he glances to the bandages where his left hand once was, but he never looks at the camera, or at the psychiatrist off-screen. The psychiatrist doesn’t have a microphone; his question can’t be heard. But a pale, thin hand -even thinner than before- clenches on the bandaged arm, and the patient’s head lowers even further, his voice even more hollow._  
  
_“They find me abhorrent… and they’re right. Ahahaha, they were... always right about that. One such as me is just… But I could have been content living with their disdain and living among the trash. I mean, I deserved to be there anyway, but it would have been worth it even just to be a thing for them to step on to reach some higher place..._  
  
_“But they already have. They shine so brightly it hurts to_ look _at them. I_ can't _look at them at all anymore. Especially Hin-…"_  
  
_His hand tightens, nails digging into the bindings, and the gloved hands of a nurse appear, chidingly forcing him to let go. The microphone doesn’t pick up much, but a mutter about possible restraints comes through. But the scene calms down after a minute of more murmurs and the nurse pats the patient on the head and moves out of view before the psychiatrist apparently encourages him to continue._  
  
_“They got there without me. Instead of being a stepping stone, I was a_ stumbling block _, all because I let events go to my head and tried to be more important than I am. I'm... I- An annoyance… a hinderance…_ useless _… Even garbage has_ some _purpose left, but_ I _do not. I’m just a wasteful_ nothing _. I_ ruin _things._ Everything _. That’s why I don’t deserve to go back."_  
  
_The patient begins to grow agitated again, and the nurse returns, this time with another._  
  
_“I don’t- I don’t deserve to be_ here _either,” he says, voice growing more and more hoarse and desperate as the nurses try to restrain him._  
  
_“You shouldn’t have woken me up.”_  
  
_Tears begin streaking his face as he struggles against their hold, and his eyes -empty, staring,_ lifeless _, despite his hysterical struggles_ _\- are visible for a brief second before one of the nurses’ backs blocks the camera entirely._  
  
_“You shouldn’t have woken me up! I’m just using up someone else’s- I'm wasting your time and- She could still- He’s not- Why didn’t he just_ leave me _to rot? He_ should _have! Why didn’t you just let me_ die? Why? _Why-“_  
  
Hinata shut the laptop with more force than necessary. For a long minute, he just stared at it, fingers tense on the casing, breath heaving as he struggled to restrain himself from flinging it across the room into the wall. Then he swallowed hard, squeezed his eyes shut, and pushed it away gently.  
  
As he forced himself to get up, he swore he could hear Junko’s mad giggle from their last confrontation ringing in his ears.  
  
  
  
===  
  
  
  
“Geez, what a _scary_ face.”  
  
Startled, Hinata snapped out of his daze and looked up from his plate to find Ibuki leaning over him. “Huh?”  
  
“You looked like _this_!” she said, pulling an exaggerated scowl before she rounded the table and plopped into a seat across from him. “Ibuki totally thought you were gonna _murder_ that carrot!” she added, before making a face of her own at her accidental choice of words.  
  
He didn’t really notice. “Sorry. Just have a lot on my mind today.”  
  
“Huuuuuh. Oh, hey, it’s the fifth! That means you got the reports from the mainland today didn’t you? Oh, man, there’s not, like, a big disaster going on or something, is there?”  
  
Everyone was looking at them now, and Hinata had to bite his tongue as he mentally debated how to gauge ‘disaster’ and how much to tell. “The Foundation’s keeping Komaeda for another month, no visitations scheduled,” he finally said as neutrally as he could manage.  
  
“That’s it?” Akane asked from the buffet. “That’s not a problem at all. Hell, they can keep him as long as they want as far as I’m concerned. After what happened last time, it’s not like-“  
  
-“ _Owari, I think you can just go punch his face in now.”_ -  
  
Hinata swallowed back the sudden urge to throw up when his own words from three years ago floated back to him. And as he glanced around and saw others nodding or agreeing with Akane, the feeling got worse. Only Mikan appeared to be avoiding the conversation, huddled in a booth and anxiously shredding a napkin as she occasionally glanced up at all of them. At him.  
  
He heard the giggling again.  
  
Putting down his chopsticks, he unsteadily got to his feet and headed for the door.  
  
“Hey, how dare you leave an unfinished plate when I cooked all morning!” Hanamura called after him, distracting the conversation, but he only threw a rote response about eating more at dinner behind him in return as the door closed behind him.  
  
  
  
===  
  
  
  
He didn’t go to dinner at all.  
  
Sitting on his bed, his head in his hands, his mind was a wash of noise.  
  
_-“Don’t tie me in with you! Stay away from me!”-_  
  
_-"Why the hell would we ever want to 'get along' with someone like that?"-_  
  
_-“Don’t take any notice of people like him.”-_  
  
_-“Shut up already! You’re out of your mind, just_ shut up _!”-_  
  
That hollow stare from the psychiatric report video kept eating at him.  
  
_-“Oh? Even Hinata-kun doesn’t like me now?”-_  
  
_-"It's okay if you don't listen to me. Just making eye contact at all is proof enough of what a nice person you are."_ -  
  
_-"Don't even try to say you wanted to become a beacon of hope like the others."-_  
  
_-“Why didn’t he just_ leave me _to rot? He_ should _have.”-_  
  
His eyes were stinging, and he closed them even tighter to make them stop. When he opened them again, it had gotten dark outside and he was lying on his bed. Had he somehow dozed off even with such stressful thoughts? He wondered-  
  
-then he suddenly couldn’t breathe, something clamped tight around his throat. Clawing at the unseen object as it squeezed tighter and tighter, he lost his balance and tumbled off the bed, finally succeeding in flinging it away.  
  
And stared in numb horror at a familiar, red-nailed hand.  
  
He shrank back against the bed in an attempt to get away from it, then froze as slender arms, one missing the very hand that attacked him, draped almost affectionately around his neck.  
  
“It’s a lucky thing for me the computer virus made him show his true colors earlier than everyone else,” a sickening familiar combination of voices cooed in his ear, just as they had when he’d fought the monster in Komaeda’s body a few months before. The breath against his skin was cold, sickly sweet and stale, and made made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.  “If _any_ of you had liked him even a _little_ bit, he might have had the strength to keep fighting me.”  
  
Reflexively, he lashed out at the dead girl, but she only laughed at him and vanished, before reappearing on his bed with a satisfied catlike smile and a cross-legged pose. “Ahahaha, to think I would _still_ have the chance to give him true despair after all! And it's _aaaaaalllll_ thanks to you, Kamukura-senpai," she said, smile widening to an inhuman degree.  
  
It was a ~~nightmare~~. A ~~memory~~. A nightmare. But knowing this did nothing to help him block her out as she began laughing again, her voice growing louder and more maniacal every second-  
  
Hinata snapped awake curled in a ball on his bed with a cold sweat beading on his skin and his clothes clinging uncomfortably to him. Rolling over, he barely managed to grab the wastebasket from beside his bed in time before he began to retch, stomach heaving what little food he’d managed to eat at lunch. When he finished, he weakly sat up, wincing at the sour taste in his mouth and the sticky feel of his skin, then looked out the window. The sun had indeed long gone down, and the lights in most of the other cottages had gone out for the night.  
  
He looked dully around his room, briefly considering the blackened monitor where Chiaki was 'sleeping', then, not even bothering to put on his socks and shoes, shook his head and headed out into the night air.  
  
  
  
===  
  
  
  
He wasn’t actually paying attention to any of the directions he'd turned, nor how long he'd been walking, so he wasn’t sure which surprised him more when he snapped out of the daze; that he’d ended up all the way at the pharmacy, or that the lights were on. The doors swished open for him when he stepped on the mat, and he wandered in, not really knowing where else to go.  
  
As he was still debating whether to even stay or not, Mikan rounded a corner, clipboard in hand, and was even more startled to see him than he was her. “A- ah, Hi- Hinata-kun, what-” she started to say, then noticed his condition. “You look _terrible_! Have you come down with something?”  
  
Before he could answer, she’d swooped down on him and dragged him off to the clinic station, where she made him sit while she fetched rags, bottled water, and a thermometer. “I’m not sick,” he managed to say when she came back, putting up his hands to ward her off before she could shove the thermometer in his mouth. “It’s… it’s just been a really bad night, and I couldn’t get back to sleep, and somehow I ended up here.”  
  
“…Oh,” she said, almost sounding disappointed, then put the thermometer in the pocket of her apron. He did gratefully accept the bottled water to rinse his mouth out, though, and took the rags to begin wiping the sand from his feet while she took a seat and put the clipboard on a table.  
  
“Why are you out here anyway?” he asked, and she turned pink, toying with her hair.  
  
“O-oh um… u-um, you’ll… you’ll think i-it’s stupid.”  
  
“No, I won’t.”  
  
“Well, um… I couldn’t… I couldn’t sleep either and… and s- sometimes… taking inventory makes me feel a little bit better.”  
  
“That’s not stupid,” Hinata said, and she perked up a little. “Better than wandering around like an idiot the way I was, anyway.”  
  
“M-maybe it’ll help you, too, then?”  
  
He sort of shrugged an affirmative, and she hopped up, vanishing into the employee only side of the clinic. She came back a few minutes later with another clipboard that had a bunch of shelf lists and a pen attached, and he took it when she held it out, getting up to get started.  
  
  
  
===  
  
  
  
It didn’t especially make him feel any less nauseous or antsy, but counting items did turn out to be good enough mindless work that he could stop thinking about his nightmares and worries for awhile. At least until he and Mikan both ended up on the same aisle of vitamin supplements, and he noticed that she’d started glancing at him the way she had in the restaurant. “What is it?”  
  
“N-nothing!”  
  
A few more shelves, and she was doing it again. “Really, whatever it is, it’s fine.”  
  
Mikan looked for a minute like she’d shut down again, then swallowed, toying with her pen. “The… the, um… th-th reason you couldn’t sleep… I-it’s because of Komaeda-kun, isn’t it?”  
  
Hinata stiffened, hold on his own pen involuntarily tightening, then he made himself calm down. “Yes. Yes, it is.”  
  
“M- me, too.”  
  
That came as a little bit of a surprise, considering… well, a lot of things, and he blinked at her for a second. “Why?”  
  
She looked down at the floor, scuffing her shoe against the tile and then scrubbing out the marks repeatedly. “I don’t… I don’t like thinking about getting my memories back, because of…. of w-what I did. But… I remembered some… some not-terrible things, too.”  
  
“You and Komaeda were friends,” Hinata realized. "That's why his behavior at your trial hurt you so much."  
  
“S- sort of,” Mikan said with a nod of her head. “M- mostly when… she would let us be. I remembered that during my... um... my time sleeping. I... I wish- I wish I hadn't said that thing to him because he... he had been right about her. ”  
  
Hinata bit his lip, processing that, then looked through the shelves to see the sun was just beginning to peek through the windows.  
  
- _“It's a lucky thing for me the computer virus made him show his true colors earlier than everyone else. If_ any _of you had liked him even a_ little _bit-”_ -  
  
He bit down harder, almost drawing blood, before shoving aside the hateful voices. _'You're not going to win this,'_ he thought viciously at them, then took a deep breath. “Hey, after we finish this, could… you maybe tell me a little about what it was like? We could go to the diner to talk.”  
  
  
  
===  
  
  
  
It had gotten to the point that Hinata and Mikan would meet almost daily at the diner for breakfast and to talk about her memories of when she and Komaeda had been active members of SHSL Despair. Thankfully, most of the others gave them space, and what teasing rumors did come out of their frequency of being seen together were easy to ignore.  
  
The lack of at least that potential major irritant was definitely a relief, as the discussions themselves were somewhat hard to take. Once Mikan finally began to grow more at ease that any negative reaction was in regards to the events that had happened, and not to _her_ , she’d grown more open in her storytelling, both for better and for worse.  
  
There were a few things Komaeda had told him that she could confirm had at least been exaggerated. But there were far too many she could also confirm had _not_ , and he’d spent more than a few nights with little or no sleep since they’d started their meetings.  
  
“Here.”  
  
Hinata blinked at the small bottles Mikan pushed into his hand. “What are these?”  
  
“Not, um, anything intensive. Just some melatonin capsules. They won’t be strong enough to stop the nightmares, but, um, they’ll help you calm down during the day and before bed.”  
  
He looked at the bottles again and couldn’t help wondering how many she went through a day if she were following her own advice. Still, he nodded his thanks and put them in his pocket, and she went to go get some rice and fried egg before coming back to the table. Hinata gave her a little time to eat before he took a deep breath and started with the first question of the day, one that had been nagging him ever since they’d watched Komaeda’s video testament after his death in the game. “Why did he turn on Enoshima?”  
  
Mikan looked up from her bowl, then took a couple more bites to get her nerve up before sitting up straight. “Honestly… I can’t say for sure." she said, drawing aimless little patterns on the table with her chopsticks. "I mean, I _saw_ him really starting to get angry with her, but we never got a chance to talk about it before she scattered SHSL Despair in favor of her new plan.”  
  
“But you have ideas.”  
  
“A couple,” she admitted. “Like, um, you know how Komaeda-kun is really serious about everything, right? No… wait, m-maybe that’s not the right word. Um, _intense_. There we go. Like, whatever he’s doing, he’s super focused on it.” When Hinata nodded, she continued. “For him, SHSL Despair was more than just a movement; it was a _purpose_. He was... he was all about using the revolution to bring about a new kind of hope, even by- by causing despair first. It was a way for him to make something of the time he had left, and he was wholeheartedly devoted to it.  But Enoshima-sam-… E- Enoshima- _san_ was much more… um… more… _mercurial_.”  
  
Despite his attempt to hold it in, Hinata couldn’t help a tiny derisive snort. “That’s one way to put it.”  
  
Even though it wasn’t aimed at her, Mikan turned a flustered pink at the insult, before recovering impressively quickly. “R-right. Well. She…um… it was impossible to predict anything with her. E-especially with Komaeda-kun. Like, one minute, she’d pat him on the cheek and talk about what an asset his skills were to the group, and then the next, she’d… she’d kick him, or scratch him, o- or throw something at him, a- and talk about what a waste he was. And she was the same a- about us being friends. Sometimes… she’d want us to be closer, like when she had me teach him field medicine, or she wanted him to teach me traps, and others… like, one time, she wouldn’t even let us talk to each other for over a week, and she’d hit him or pull my hair if we slipped up.”  
  
Hinata absently toyed with his coffee cup, pondering it. “Doesn’t seem like something Komaeda would have had a problem with, considering. And besides, from what I’ve heard from Naegi, it seems Enoshima treated everyone that way.”  
  
“I- I think that’s just _it_ , though. Um, see… there was… there was an accident on one of our assignments w-where we got sent with Ikusaba-san. The- the timer was wrong, a-and we didn’t get out fast enough. I got hit in the head by some rubble really hard. And when I woke up, he, um, Komaeda-kun was the one fixing my bandages, but he was really, really mad about what had happened. I- I don’t think he was aware I’d woken up. I remember he said; um, he said ‘Even the Soldier is just her doll’.”  
  
She swallowed, then took a sip of her tea and another bite of rice and egg, and Hinata made himself be still, knowing any signs of impatience might stall out the conversation. Some habits died hard, after all.  
  
“Ikusaba-san was the tipping point,” Mikan finally said with a resolute nod. “It was after that that Komaeda-kun began watching Enoshima-san much more closely, and she started separating him from the rest of us… I guess… I guess because whatever it was that he was seeing, she didn’t want us to know about it. But I heard him talking to himself again one day, and he just kept muttering about how it was all her stupid game.” She hung her head. “I didn’t… I didn’t figure it out until after she told us all to… to get lost because she had a new plan. I was just so upset that she didn’t need us anymore… and then I saw what happened at Hope’s Peak on TV, and suddenly…”  
  
Slowly, the pieces began clicking into place. “If he’d been the _only_ one she considered just a plaything, or if the abuse had been part of making you all more effective players in the revolution, he’d have never questioned it.”  
  
Mikan nodded again, much more hesitantly. “But that wasn’t the case. N- not only was _he_ nothing but… a _toy_ to her… s-so were all the _rest_ of us… _everyone_. S-she’d put us all on _his_ level. A-and the so-called glorious revolution of despair had never… had never… it it wasn’t a movement. It wasn't something to change the world, or.. or even just to get _revenge_ on it. It was just a… just.. a-a _game_ for her own amusement. And then… and then Naegi _beat_ the game, and _her_.”  
  
  
  
===  
  
  
  
After they’d finished breakfast and left the diner to join the others, it had been on Hinata’s mind. While he'd been going over the previous day's camera footage with Chiaki, it had been on his mind. While he and Sonia had been finishing bedding and table laundry, while he and Nidai broke up yet another argument between Gundam and Souda, while everyone had lunch on the beach, he’d still been thinking about what he’d learned that morning.  
  
Once lunch was over, he’d excused himself and made his way back to his little bungalow, where he pulled out the worn little pad he’d been keeping all his notes since Junko’s last appearance in. As he wrote down the new information, he glanced up at his laptop and paused, pen hesitating in the middle of a word.  
  
The usual reports had arrived the day before, but they had come with another psych evaluation statement attached.  
  
He hadn’t been able to make himself watch it yet.  
  
Hinata looked down at his notes again, then swallowed. Holding the notebook tight, he got up and went over to his desk and flipped his laptop open. He didn’t turn the sound on; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle that yet. And besides, what Komaeda _said_ wasn’t what he was focused on at the moment.  
  
Pale hair was even more of a mess, despite some well-meaning nurse’s attempt to brush it into some kind of order and pull it back, but this time, Komaeda was docile enough to raise his head to the point that his eyes, under-ringed by dark sleep deprivation circles, could be easily seen. Painful as it was, Hinata forced himself to keep his attention locked on them as much as Komaeda’s movements allowed as the video played.  
  
And finally, Junko’s mocking made sense.  
  
Even with his insistence that he’d been on the side of hope, they had all assumed that his death gambit had been his fall to the despair Junko had sought to sow through Monokuma. But seeing his eyes _then_ versus seeing them _now_ , knowing what he _did_ now about Komaeda’s relationship with Junko…  
  
She’d given him a direction for what life he had left, only for it to not only be _false_ , but a _joke_. And when his new purpose had become to _stop her_ , she’d not only evaded him at every turn, up to and including both of their deaths, so to speak, she’d still gotten the last laugh in a sense by taking full control of him, however temporarily, before vanishing for good. Little by little, she'd ripped out pieces of him until he had nothing left at all.  
  
No remaining reason, nor cause to live or die for except the desire to stop existing in order to stop being a drain on resources.  
  
_This_ was Nagito Komaeda’s true despair.  
  
Hinata felt a shooting pain in his mouth and realized he’d been clenching his teeth. The pen in his hand had cracked into a useless mess, splattering ink all over his hand. He tossed it into the garbage with more force than necessary and grabbed a tissue to wipe the ink off, thoughts dark.  
  
After a few minutes, anger washed over into resolve. Well, this wasn’t over by a long shot, and now he knew what he needed to do. After taking a brief glance at the final notes of the video to confirm what he already knew, that they wouldn’t be allowing Komaeda out for another month, he asked Chiaki to pull up the communications system so he could send a message to Naegi.  
  
_‘Access to the islands may not be allowed, but is it possible that Komaeda could receive a visitor at the treatment center?’_  
  
  
  
===  
  
  
  
From the looks of the outside, he'd been expecting something out of a creepy video game like many other buildings he'd seen, but the hallways of the mental health building were as sunny and well-kept as the hospital on the island. Given that there were many more people here, though, the quiet was eerie enough that he held the tray he was carrying a little tighter and made sure not to fall more than a couple steps behind the nurse.  
  
"He's been fairly well behaved," the older man was saying. "However, all rooms are video monitored, and if you need any assistance, there's a call button beside the bed. Blue is for a nurse, red is for orderlies."  
  
"Thank you," Hinata mumbled. "I don't think it'll be a problem."  
  
Though a part of him almost hoped it _would_ , instead of what he was expecting to find.  
  
A few more twists and turns, and they came to a room with an innocuous plaque and clipboard beside the door.  The nurse knocked lightly, then poked his head inside to cheerfully call a greeting, and Hinata tried  to make his hands unclench. Once he'd gotten up his nerve, he forced a smile and went into the room.  
  
As the door closed behind him, however, he found himself rooted to the floor.  
  
The video recordings hadn't prepared him for just _how bad_ Komaeda's physical condition was up close. Here, Hinata could see the labor he put into breathing. How his patient's uniform hung off him unnaturally. The IVs that dotted his bandaged arm. The unsteady way he kind of rocked back and forth to himself as though he might fall asleep, or fall _over_. Mikan had confirmed the cancer diagnosis, and he'd overheard heard the nurses talking about having trouble getting their patient to eat when he'd requested the tray, but...  
  
It was painful enough to look at that he almost turned and fled. After a minute, however, he swallowed thickly and forced himself to walk closer to the bed. "Komaeda."  
  
Komaeda stiffened, but didn't turn his head.  
  
Hinata made his way around the bed, passing into the shafts of sunlight from the window. A glint of color out of the corner of his eye as he did so made him glance over to see that the treatment center had gone to the effort of putting in some flower gardens for the patients. It would have been a really nice view, had it not been for the bars wrapped in padding that had been put over the window to keep anyone in the room from hurting themselves.  
  
"Komaeda."  
  
Another twitch, but still no response. Biting his lip and hoping he wasn't about to make a big mistake, Hinata shifted the tray to one hand, then reached out. _"Nagito."_  
  
His hand didn't make contact; the intense use of his given name startled Komaeda out of wherever his mind had gone enough that he looked up, the clouds in his eyes giving way to recognition just a little bit. Hinata drew his hand back, then nodded to an empty space on the bed. "Mind if I sit?"  
  
Looking slightly confused, as if he wasn't quite sure yet that Hinata was physically there, Komaeda shifted to give him a little more room, and Hinata sat down, settling the tray in his lap.  
  
"What-?"  
  
"I asked the nurses if they would mind letting me bring you lunch today. I guess you could call it an apology for leaving you hungry that time," Hinata said, trying to subtly watch Komaeda's expression as he began opening the meal compartments.  
  
Komaeda gave him a smile that would have been an exact copy of his old casual self-deprecation, had it not been for the fact that it didn't reach his eyes. "Ah... For Hinata-kun to come all this way for such a menial task... and for trash as lowly as-"  
  
"Hey," Hinata interrupted with forced lightness, a little disturbed by the dull, stilted tone of voice. "What happened to 'reserver'?"  
  
He realized that had been the wrong thing to say when Komaeda seemed to shrink in on himself a little. The other young man stared down at his bandaged arm, and Hinata briefly got a mental flash of cracks across his face, like a mask breaking apart.  
  
"I was a fool," Komaeda said softly before Hinata could apologize. "To be so arrogant as to think I had any real importance in the game. That any move I made would have been of worth, let alone worthy enough to be given the title of hope."  
  
"Komaeda-"  
  
"And the things I said to you... the way I acted towards you... they were foolish as well.  After all, even without a talent, you beat _her_... and not just once. That is the _true_ mark of hope, isn't it? To defeat despair whenever it rears its head? So I was wrong again."  
  
Hinata took hold of Komaeda's hand before he could start pulling at his bandages again and moved it back to his lap, trying to ignore how paper-thin his skin felt. _'I haven't won yet,'_ he wanted to say. _'She still has her claws in you.'_ But he couldn't make those words come out.  
  
"Come back to the islands," fell out of his mouth instead, and he felt his face heating when Komaeda raised his head and blinked at him in surprise. He'd intended to get around to that eventually, but not for awhile yet.  
  
Now that he'd said it, though, he had to keep going. "I don't mean _today_... immediately... or anything. There's no way they'd let you go in this state," he mumbled, stumbling over the words. "I mean get better, or... at least as healthy as you _can_ with your condition. Do what the doctors tell you. Start eating again. And then... and then come back."  
  
The silence after he awkwardly trailed off hung between them; heavy, uncomfortable, and broken only by the ticking of the wall clock. Finally, Komaeda tilted his head a little. "The others won't be too happy about that".  
  
"I don't care. They're my friends, but..." Hinata fiddled with the chopsticks, finally reining himself in. "You say you were stupid, but so was I. There were a lot of things that I could have handled better. _Should_ have handled better. Maybe if I hadn't gone in with the assumption that I was going to be annoyed by you no matter what, maybe it would have been easier for both of us. So... I want to try again. See if we can be friends this time."  
  
Komaeda stared at him, the gears almost visibly turning in his head as he slowly caught up to the explanation. "After all that, you... would want to be friends with someone like-"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Komaeda looked away, chewing at his lip a little. He began pulling at his bandages again, and Hinata had to hold on to the chopsticks a little tighter to keep from automatically batting his hand away from them, recognizing he needed a few minutes of space.  
  
"I... Can't make any promises," Komaeda finally murmured so softly that Hinata had to lean forward to hear him. "There are a lot of things that I have trouble controlling anymore. But I will try."  
  
"Fair enough." Hinata took up a bite of vegetables with the chopsticks and held it out. "Want to start now?"  
  
It was a pretty weak attempt at humor, but it succeeded in earning him a very faint snort of laughter, and Komaeda accepted.  
  
  
  
===  
  
  
  
"How many more days are you staying?"  
  
Hinata accepted two dinner trays from the nurse, who nodded and closed the door, then he turned to answer Komaeda's question. "I've got three left before they ship me back," he said, laying one across Komaeda's lap before sitting down in the chair that had been brought in for him. "Naegi's trying to get some kind of visitation schedule approved for me. Remember, though, you have to keep trying even when I'm not here."  
  
The smile was small, but at least it seemed genuine. "I won't forget, Hinata-kun. The nurses have promised to remind me every day."  
  
He leaned over and opened the compartments of Komaeda's tray for him, but the patient managed to tear open package for the the disposable chopsticks with his teeth and snap them apart one-handed. It was definitely more than Komaeda would have been able to do a week previously, and seeing it reassured Hinata somewhat that this would work out.  
  
"I talked to Mikan today, too," Hinata said after they'd started eating. "They're letting her start studying all the requirements to act as caretaker when you're stable enough to move hospitals. Then she'll train me, that way we can alternate shifts so Chiaki won't have to monitor constantly. Mikan really misses you," he added tentatively, and Komaeda looked up from his food with a blink.  
  
"Misses me?"  
  
He nodded. "I don't know how much you remember from... that incident, but the Foundation decided not to attempt memory removal on anyone who'd died in the program. There was too much risk, especially..."  
  
Komaeda picked through the vegetables on his tray, and Hinata didn't miss the faint tremor in his hand. Then the tension eased somewhat, and Komaeda gave another one of those small, thin smiles. "I see."  
  
Dinner finished without incident or outburst, and Hinata took the trays and left them just outside the door for pick up. They still had a little while before visiting hours were up, though, so he went and claimed his 'usual' spot on the bed. "Still feeling all right? It's getting really close to time for another medication round, isn't it?"  
  
He got a nod in response, and could see that Komaeda had gone tense again. "Keep talking. Please?" Komaeda said in a slightly strained voice after a little effort. "I know it's a stupid request, but-"  
  
"It's not stupid," Hinata said, reaching out. Komaeda briefly resisted, then let himself be held, though he was shaking a little, and Hinata took hold of the bandaged arm in an attempt to help keep him calm. "I was thinking... If you're doing well enough by the summer months, we could go see the birds."  
  
"Birds?"  
  
"Yeah." Shifting the arm around Komaeda's shoulders, he began petting ash-colored hair. He glanced over at the door when a nurse poked her head in, then nodded in response to her hand signals. Medication _now_. "The islands are in the middle of some migration paths. Some of the grottos get whole flocks of travelers in all kinds of colors. Reds, and purples, and blues. They're really pretty. _Greedy_ , too. Souda found out the hard way that some of them are used to people enough that they steal bread. They're probably from what's left of the tourist areas."  
  
While he was talking, the nurse returned, followed by an orderly, with a cart of needles and fresh IVs. Holding Komaeda as he was, Hinata felt him stiffen at the sight of restraints, and quickly shook his head. The orderly raised an eyebrow, but put them away, and Komaeda allowed Hinata to raise the bandaged arm for the IVs and bindings to be changed and the injectiions to be given.  
  
"Gundam talks to them like they're his army, of course. And he keeps track of all the nesting habits. We could probably find a day no one's out there, though. Just take a lunch and find a good spot to sit for a couple of hours." The nurse signaled him that they were done, and he made a tiny wave as they left. "What do you think?"  
  
"I... I would like that," Komaeda mumbled against his shoulder, and Hinata just held on until he began to relax from the medications taking hold.  
  
"Good. We'll do that, then, okay?" he said, helping Komaeda to lay back down in bed.  
  
"Okay."  
  
It didn't take long at all for the drugs to put Komaeda to sleep, and Hinata just sat quietly beside him for a little while, watching the slow drag of his breathing. When the chime sounded to signal the end of visiting hours, however, he made himself get up.  
  
He made it as far as the door before impulse took hold, then returned one more time to the bed to brush a kiss against a pale forehead.  
  
"We'll definitely do that," he promised resolutely, and turned the lights off behind him as he left for the night.


	3. Sifting Out Lost Grains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened 'last time' and why Hinata is holding such a grudge. An in between chapter from the end to the present.

Chiaki, much to their amazement, had been the first to come back. Naegi had called it a testament to the talent of her creator that she'd been so well-crafted as to be salvagable. Hinata hadn't really cared by what _means_ she'd returned, he'd just been glad she _did_. After all, if _she_ could...

She'd been more than happy to take over the monitoring of those in the tanks, giving Souda some much-needed rest from constantly watching for necessary maintenance. It took months more of vigils and months more of hoping and work, but one by one, their friends had woken up from their chambered sleep, seemingly none the worse for wear. One by one, the links were added back to their chain.

Until Komaeda had revived.

Rather than taking him, the Foundation had insisted that he remain on the island with the rest of them, much to vocal dismay from several of the others.

And Hinata...

Hinata wasn't sure yet _what_ to think.

So he, like everyone else, just kept a wide berth. So long as he was supposed to not be a threat anymore, no one really cared what Komaeda did. And that had seemed to be fine with Komaeda. The other boy stayed in a cottage away from theirs, made his own meals and ate alone, and didn't really see fit to talk to any of them. Though a few had mentioned a feeling of being watched, and Hinata had gotten the creeping feeling too, Komaeda had been quiet and... well... _non-Komaeda-ish_ enough that nothing had come of it.

And yet something about it all still felt _Wrong_.

Occasionally, Hinata would catch a glimpse of that green coat and turn in a motion to catch Komaeda by the sleeve as he ghosted past, only to falter and let his hand drop. Once or twice, he'd seen the boy huddled at a table, prodding at bruises or pulling at bits of his hair or the bandages of a missing hand and muttering darkly to apparently no one, and almost went to sit with him, then stopped at the last second and suddenly 'remembered' somewhere else he needed to be.

He couldn't explain why the unease was so terrible. In the end, none of them except Chiaki had been innocent, him least of all. And Komaeda was...

Komaeda was...

It had been bothering him again over the past few days, and he'd started taking on extra chores to try not to think about it. He was busy sweeping when he heard shoes crunching over sand and cobblestones on the part of the path he hadn't gotten to yet.

He started to turn to see who it was, then there was a sharp stinging pain at the base of his neck before everything went dark.

  
=

  
Hinata woke to a numbness in his head, and a burning in his neck. He tried to raise a hand to find out what the hell had hit him, only to find when both of them came up that they were bound together.

"-the fuck?" he mumbled so very eloquently, then lifted his head.

His mouth went dry when he saw the bloodied body flopped over in the chair in front of the monitor screens that kept track of the island's security systems.

This was bad.

He quickly looked to his left, only to find the screen where Chiaki would have communicated with the guard was black.

That was worse.

"Ah! It's about time senpai woke up! I was getting _sooo bored_ of waiting!" The dry feeling in Hinata's mouth got worse as he twisted around to find Komaeda sitting in the other guard's chair, a blood-covered knife in the same hand he rested his cheek on and a body at his feet. "Surprised?" he asked sweetly.

It took several seconds for Hinata to manage to swallow and find his voice. "You- what the hell did you do to-"

"Oh, don't worry about _them_ ," the other boy said as he got up and kicked the body aside in one fluid motion. "Heh, they were just in the way. This is a game just for the three of _us_."

 _Three_ -?

As Komaeda tossed the knife somewhere out of view and strolled over to the monitor bank to begin fiddling with the camera views, it was then that little things began pinging Hinata as _'off'_.  Things he probably wouldn't have noticed much in a crowd, but were setting off alarm warnings now that they were alone and in a situation like this. The way Komaeda'd been sitting, crosslegged and coquettish, the way he'd walked with a slight sway to his hips, the dramatically casual flourish of flinging the knife, calling him ' _senpai'_ , of all things. None of that was _Komaeda_.

But he  _had_ seen similar quirks before, he realized with a chill.

"You're dead," he choked out.

Komaeda paused, then turned his head, smile just a little too wide, eyes just a little too bright. "Whatever do you _mean_ , Hinata-kun? Maybe I shocked you a bit too hard if you can't remember that we-"

 _"You're dead!"_ Hinata snapped, trying to get to his feet. "We crashed the program! I saw you get deleted!"

The smile twisted into a petulant scowl, then 'Komaeda' returned, and Hinata gasped sharply in pain as he was kicked back against the wall with surprising strength. 'Komaeda' crouched in front of him and lifted his chin, and the smile returned, this time sharp and predatory.

"You really don't give me enough credit. I'm hurt. As if I'd so easily hand over my favorite toy to the likes of a bunch of _boring idiots_ like you. And that's all you _are_ anymore, you know, Kamukura-senpai." Enoshima clenched the grip, raggedly-bitten nails digging into the sides of his face hard enough to make him wince, then pulled away and stood up. "But seeing as I'm such a nice person, I'm saving you for last anyway."

It felt a whole lot harder to breathe all of a sudden. "Last?"

"To kill, _duh!_ Now that you bastards've all gone and gotten yourselves _brainwashed_ by the Foundation, you're even _less_ than useless. Can't have _that_. So now you get to be wiped out totally. You won't even be smears on the history books! It'll be fun!"

Hinata's mind raced as Enoshima turned back to her monitors. He didn't know if he'd been gone long enough for the others to notice, but he had to stop her somehow, or at least stall. Bad enough when she'd been a computer virus, now that she had access to actual _weapons_ \- Looking around for anything that would help, he noticed that she'd left a stun gun -probably the one she'd used on him- lying on the security guard's table. But getting to it without her noticing-

Talking.

Enoshima loved talking. Especially bragging. But whatever plan she had this time wouldn't be enough of a distraction, he had to get her on a subject that would- Inspiration struck, and he raised himself up on his knees.

"Why him?" That only earned him a side glance, but he could see the spark of interest.

Got her.

"Why Komaeda instead of someone more willing? He hates your guts, doesn't he?"

Even from where he was, he could see the tremor go through the one usable arm, then Enoshima stepped back from the monitors and spun on 'her' heel, grin wide and giddy. "Because that's the _entire point_! You have _no idea_ what it's like to have someone so intensely _hate_ you with every fiber of their being that they would happily _kill themselves_ just to _stop_ you! Finding that out was almost as _wonderfully_ despair-inducing as my own deaths! I couldn't possibly let all that focused hatred _go_ , could I?"

As he'd hoped, the lure of her own cleverness and whatever sick...  _relationship_ she had with Komaeda gave him a tiny opening. He had just enough time to grab the stun-gun and hide it under his leg before her attention snapped back to him.

"Of course, my dear Komaeda-senpai _almost_ knows what it's like. It’s a lucky thing for me the computer virus made him show his true colors earlier than everyone else. If _any_ of you had liked him even a _little_ bit, he might have had the strength to keep fighting me." The play of emotions must have shown on his face, because she giggled near maniacally. "Oh, it was hilarious. ' _Poor , poor senpai_ , it must _suck_ to know your luck's as much of a worthless failure as you. Not only do they hate you even _more_ , but _I'm still here!_ Hahaha, you threw away _everything_ for _nothing!_ You really screwed that one up'!"

That terrible unease started to come creeping back, and Hinata found himself faltering. "You- We- we don't-..." he started feebly, only to be cut off when Enoshima leaned down close, a single hand clamped so tightly on his collarbone that he felt nauseous for a second. He never would have thought Komaeda still had this kind of strength in him. For a brief moment, he wondered if Komaeda had lied about his illness, then realized he'd fallen even deeper into Enoshima's trap again when she grinned wider.

"Can't even get the words out, can you? You're such a _terrible_ liar, Kamukura-senpai; you _always_ were." She leaned even further, until that he could feel warm breath and dry, cracked lips against his ear. "Oh, and just so you know, he's hearing all this still."

And the unease just turned into a lead weight in his stomach. "W-what?"

"I _told_ you there were three of us, didn't I? You didn't think I'd let him _miss out_ on _this_ , did you?  I'm nowhere near done with him." Enoshima gave a low laugh, and instead of her arrogant giggle in Komaeda's voice, it was a perfect imitation of Komaeda's raspy chuckle. "To think I would still have the chance to give him _true_ despair after all! And it's _aaaaaalllll_ thanks to you, Kamukura-senpai."

He barely felt it when she let go of him to mockingly pat his cheek, or when she braced the hand against his knee to straighten up. But when she stiffened, expression going surprised, then sour, he came back to himself and realized he'd shifted too much. _Shit_.

"Eh? _You bastard_ , how the hell did you get-"

Her having to compensate balance for Komaeda's missing hand bought him only a couple of seconds, and not enough time to actually think about what he was doing. On survival reflex, he snatched the bared stun gun from under his leg and swung it up, catching Komaeda's body square in the throat.

The horrible gurgling screech Komaeda made before hitting the ground in a boneless heap still skittered over his nerves almost a full minute later. Hunched over, Hinata gulped back nausea, then forced himself to reach out with bound hands to search the closest dead guard's pocket. An army knife cut his hands free, then he got up, taking only a brief second to make sure that Komaeda still had pulse and breath before going to Chiaki's monitor. Thankfully, Enoshima hadn't decided to cut the wires or anything drastic like that, and a reset effort restored connection quickly. "Hajime-kun! Thank goodness, we've been looking everywhere for you! Are you all right? What happened?"

Hinata bit his lip, looking at the bodies of the guards, and then at Komaeda's unconscious form. "There's been... There was a glitch in the revival program," he mumbled quietly. "Could you contact Naegi and the others for me? Tell them to send a crew."

Chiaki's expression shifted from relieved to concerned, then she nodded. "Okay. Anything else?"

  
_-"He's not one of us!"-_

  
_-"Why couldn't he have died instead?"-_

  
_-"I swear if I see that psycho again, I'll fuckin' kill 'im!"-_

  
The memories mixed with Enoshima's mockery in his head, and Hinata closed his eyes swallowed thickly, moving his hands behind him a little to hide that they'd started shaking. " _Yeah_... Yeah. Don't let anyone in until the Foundation's people get here."

If anything, Chiaki's concern only grew deeper, but she nodded again, then the feed cut out. Biting his lip, Hinata looked at Komaeda again, then went and crouched down beside him. He couldn't make himself touch the other boy again, though whether it was because he was afraid Enoshima might be the one to wake back up or... some other reason, he couldn't say.

But he didn't move from the spot until he heard the doors unlocking.


	4. Not As Pretty When Mended, But Pretty All the Same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They don't know how much time they've got left, so every little thing is important as each day comes.

Hinata opened his eyes, wincing at the sunlight peeking through the window across the hall, then sat up and yawned. Ten-thirty, according to the clock. He didn't remember when he'd actually fallen asleep. He rubbed at the crick in his neck before getting up and heading down the hall to retrieve one of the spare sets of clothing he always left in the little clinic. He thought about going to use one of the showers first, then changed his mind and course and went to the patient area instead.

  
There was a fresh bundle of flowers waiting on the floor when he got there. The little monitor beside the door's keypad had a green light, so he tapped the call button to get Chiaki's attention.

  
"Ah! Good morning!" she chirped when the feed came on. "Did you sleep well?"

  
"As well as anyone can on that couch," Hinata replied. "I'm assuming that since no one came to get me, he calmed down?"

  
"He's doing much better," Chiaki said with a nod. "He didn't give Mikan-san any trouble during breakfast, and the other nurses and his psychiatrist were able to get him to sleep without sedating him before they left."

  
Hinata let out a small breath of relief at that. "Where's Mikan now?"

  
"Sleeping. She left just after everyone went back to the mainland."

  
_Good._ God knew she needed the rest after the violent episode had broken out the night before. After getting kicked out himself, he'd had nothing to do but pace and worry, then _sit_ and worry, before sleep deprivation caught up to him, and _that_ was nothing compared to having to look after a hallucinating and struggling Nagito all night.

  
He tapped the entrance code on the keypad, picked up the flowers, and let himself into the room.

  
_-"I- I'm sorry about the room, Komaeda-kun! We tried to put the equipment in one of the cottages, but-"_

  
_"You don't have to apologize for anything at all," Komaeda said, giving Mikan's hand a squeeze as they wheeled him into the patient area. "It will suit just fine. I bet it's a lot nicer than the room at the treatment center."-_

  
Edging past the small table and plush chairs -Sonia's insistance, like the flowers left at the door every morning- Hinata made his way to the bed first to look his partner over as he put his extra clothes down, then changed out the flowers and threw the old ones away. Though he was breathing fairly easy in his sleep, _thankfully_ , the night had definitely taken its toll. Tangled hair was plastered to a pale, thin face by a sheen of sweat, and Hinata could see the scrapes on Nagito's knuckles where he'd been fighting the nurses. His wrist was bruised as well, clearly from the attempts to restrain him to the bed. He'd left nervous bites on his arm and hand before the fit had turned really violent. There were others -smaller, fainter- clustered at his neck and shoulders and barely visible under his patient uniform, but Hinata didn't have to worry about those. He knew where those came from.

  
_-"_ Hajime, _" Nagito breathed against his ear in a ragged noise of gratitude and reverence, and the sound of it combined with nails scraping over his back made him briefly toss caution to the wind and bite down harder. He'd knew he would probably be mortified later at the marks he was leaving, at the fact that they'd ended up like this at all considering where they were at in things, but pleading encouragements and the eagerly squirming body beneath him were a little more important at the moment.-_

  
He blushed a little and looked away for a second, then carefully picked up his partner's hand. The dark discoloration made the little beaded bracelet stand out even more, and Hinata bit his lip as he brushed his thumb over the bruises before untying the threads that held the bracelet closed and laid the hand back down.

  
With only a few sets of clothes for the days Nagito felt well enough for them to take him outside, the rest of the drawers in the closet by the bed had been converted into collection cases. Opening the third one, Hinata switched the bracelet he held with one of the many others Ibuki had passed off to him - _"Ibuki doesn't like the look of this one,"_ she'd say, or _"Ibuki has a better idea for this one!"_ \- and closed it again, setting the bracelet on the bedside table next to the vase.

  
The fourth drawer up held assorted gemstones and other rocks and shells in pretty colors. The shells he'd mostly collected himself, but he'd been surprised to find Nidai had been very knowledgable on the matter of identifying rocks, and the big man had even insisted on helping to break them apart to find the best patterns. One by one, Hinata chose several, exchanging them with those that had been arranged on the table beside Nagito's bed.

  
When he'd finished with that, he selected a few small beads and feathers from the fifth drawer, and used some thread to tie them together into a luck charm. The design had been shown to him by Tanaka; some of the feathers had come from the times he'd been able to take Nagito to see the bird grottos, others had been given to him by Mahiru when she'd brought them back from picture-taking.

  
Eleven o' clock chimed and music began playing from one of the monitors, and Hinata looked up and smiled his thanks, knowing Chiaki would see it through the cameras. None of them had ever asked what he'd needed all the assorted little trinkets for. He'd never brought it up, either. It had all just sort of been a mutual silent understanding that this was the only way the others would be comfortable visiting Nagito.

  
And that was okay.

  
He hung the new charm on the stand holding Nagito's IV bags and took the one that was already there down, untying it and replacing the pieces back in their drawers. And finally, he lifted the sleeping man's hand again and tied the new bracelet on.

  
Rituals like that had become important to in the time since Nagito had come back to the islands. Hinata hadn't realized how necessary they'd been until a few months ago when he'd found his partner repeatedly counting the bite marks they'd both left on his skin just to have something, _anything_ , to keep his mind focused on so it couldn't wander to dark places. He'd started the collections then, changing things out every time he visited, whether Nagito was awake or not, so he'd have something to look at during the times when they couldn't bring him books.

  
Still holding on to Nagito's hand, Hinata pulled one of the chairs over and took a seat, listening to the music and the beeping of the machines.

  
- _"It's going to happen," Nagito mumbled in agitation, huddled in on himself as Hinata rubbed his back to try to calm him down. "Something bad is going to happen, because of this, because of_ us _. I can't... I can't be... be this_ happy _this long without-"_

  
_"Hey,_ hey _," Hinata chided, leaning forward to wrap his arms around the other man's shoulders. "Remember what you told me about how your luck works? First something bad, then something better?"_

  
_"Y-yeah?"_

  
_"I don't think anything could possibly worse than having to share a body with the Ego Queen of Despair, do you? So maybe you've earned a break for the rest of your life."  
_

  
_Nagito had made a choked noise then and clung to him, shaking, and at first, Hinata had been afraid that he'd set off another mind bomb. But instead, after a few seconds, he realized his partner was_ laughing _, and relaxed, holding him tighter._ -

  
It wasn't perfect. And with Nagito's condition still slowly deteriorating, there were going to be more nights like the nights before, where the wrong question pushed buttons he wouldn't have had before. But... this wasn't terrible.

  
Smiling faintly, he lightly kissed long, thin fingers, then tucked the hand back under the blanket while he waited for Nagito to wake up. Then he'd see about a shower and lunch for both of them.

  
They just had to do the best they could, that was all.


End file.
